


Underdeveloped

by dacmennis



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Coercion, M/M, Mac and Dennis move to the suburbs, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:43:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dacmennis/pseuds/dacmennis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My re-imagining of Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs. Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underdeveloped

The weather this year was unusual for February in the Northeast, little to no snow had accumulated thus far, and most days the high temperature was peaking around twenty-five degrees, a welcoming change from the annual frigid, windy nights below zero. A warm current had swept through the region during the night, bringing with it a light rain that dampened the earth and the grass appeared much greener this morning, the lawns sparkling with glittery dew, this morning's temperature a springlike fifty-two.  


Mac turned his face upward and a balmy breeze ran through his tousled bedhead hair. He sighed deeply into the morning air and leaned against the sturdy railing of the wooden deck, running his fingers over the splintery texture in an attempt to ground himself. Another night of sleep had been lost, though the incessant chirping of the faulty smoke detector wasn't completely to blame for this one. All insomnia aside, Mac found himself unsettled and anxious in his new surroundings; how was it that everyone else was able to deal with a scenario as normal as living in a nice house in a quiet neighborhood, but he wasn't?  


A hand pressed into the small of his back, startling Mac out of his rabbit trail of thought. "Hey," Dennis began, proffering a mug of black coffee which Mac accepted, eager to wash away last night's complicated mess. Steam evaporated heavily into the twilight of the morning, spilled coffee staining a perfect circle into the deck's railing.  


Dennis leaned his head carefully against Mac's velvety robed shoulder and searched for the words to absolve himself of the guilt that burdened him. While Mac allowed their physical closeness, he stood staring past the lawn, lips tight and downturned.  


"Look, about last night," Dennis sighed. "I don't really know-"  


"You told me you hated me, Dennis," Mac cut him off, turning to glare into his friend's eyes as toughly as he could, though an unmistakable sting of hurt could be detected. "You've never said it like that before. It was so mean and hateful. I don't fucking get it, man. What is it that you want from me? You're the one who I let run this show because if I don't, you never stop reminding me that your ideas are best. So I falter and let you decide everything. But when I do what you say? You fall apart anyway! Then _I_ fall apart! Why won't you just let us coexist?"  


"Me?" Dennis scoffed, taking a hard swallow of the scalding coffee before setting his own mug down too hard on the railing, liquid sloshing over the porcelain rim. " _I'm_ not the one to blame here. I outlined a plan that I genuinely thought would work for the both of us. My idea was to shoulder the responsibility of work and finances because this routine has always worked for me. I let you stay home all day and essentially...play! You make the same dish for breakfast, lunch, dinner -- it's driving me crazy! I know you can cook, hell, if _Charlie_ can come up with disgustingly creative recipes then you can too. You've just been flitting around and not getting anything done while I've been neck deep in traffic and stress and fucking--Wally and his intolerable global warming banter bullshit!"  


"You've been avoiding me, is this why? Because I can't cook or clean or fix shit or...do anything I don't know how to do? I just do what I know, man. I try."  


"You're NOT trying! You have every opportunity to learn something new, I don't know, fucking--YouTube how to fix the pool filter or find a stud or cook something! Quit wearing your heart on your sleeve and bleeding it all over the place to me. I know you're fucking capable."  


"Dennis-"  


"No, Mac, _also?_ Why did you kill the dog?"  


Mac's mouth hung open as he stalled. "I...hey, you didn't feed him, either."  


Dennis threw his head back in disbelief. "Quit with the goddamn blame shifting! You can't honestly tell me you love and care so much for something and let it go by the wayside every fucking time! You're doing it with our house and you did it with the dog you said you'd raise as a child. You have blood on your hands and you don't even care! Unbelievable. You know what? It's a good thing you don't have kids. You'd be a terrible dad. You'd be the bio-dad who tells everyone how much he loves his kids but never bothers to go visit or pay child support."  


Mac placed his hands on Dennis's shoulders to steady him, seeing as his face had reddened and neck musculature strained against the skin. "Jesus Christ, calm down, dude. Look, I don't think you realize how stressful it is on _me_ to be so...vestigial. I want to be able to do things that a normal person would do, but I'm not a househusband or whatever you envision. I thrive when I'm protecting the perimeter! When I'm kicking ass, dude. I don't have a reason to kick ass in this neighborhood because our greatest threat is a senior citizen obsessed with the weather!"  


"Mac, you've never kicked anyone's ass in your life. You've gotten mauled every time you've tried."  


"But see? I've kept at it because it's my passion. I'm going insane here, dude. I don't _want_ to try here because this is all so boring to me. I'm understimulated and you're overstimulated. It's not a problem for me to go to work, I mean come on - do you expect me to quit just because we've moved away? That's impossible, dude."  


Dennis shivered as the breeze cut through his freshly-showered hair. Mac dropped his arms to his sides, sighing restlessly.  


"Come here," Dennis whispered, wrapping Mac into a warm hug, burying his face into the warm, salty skin of his friend's neck. Mac returned the hug enthusiastically, eager to smooth things over and move on from the unrelenting fear of failure and worthlessness he felt, if only for a moment.  


"Look," Dennis pulled back and pursed his lips into a thoughtful expression. "I'm sorry I've been boxing you in. Let's try something different. You go to work today, and I'll stay here. I'll see what I can get done."  


"Seriously?!" Mac was elated.  


"Yeah, go on," Dennis waved him away. "I need a break from that fucking traffic. It's brutal, man. One more minute of that shit and I swear to god I'll beat the next sorry son of a bitch with a tire iron." Dennis chuckled lightheartedly, though retaining all seriousness in his statement.  


"Oh, this is great!" Mac squealed, life returning to his big brown eyes and his face brightening with a smile. "Den, thanks so much. I'm going stir-crazy."  


"Don't mention it. And don't forget your Creed tape."  


Mac laughed dumbly at the suggestion before turning on his heels and gliding away with elation. Dennis turned toward the horizon, now a breathtaking gradient of yellowish green in the east, steadying himself with a vow to turn things around today and swallowing the last of his coffee, now cold in its cup. He dumped the rest over the deck railing and put himself to work.  


⁂

Four-thirty arrived and Mac strode through the door happily. Though it had taken a full ninety minutes to get home, he remained unfettered by the stagnant traffic. All the more time to listen to his mixtape! Whistling with delight, Mac popped the key in the lock of the front door and called out into the strangely sanitary smell of the foyer. “Dennis?”  


“In here,” Dennis called from the kitchen.  


Mac took his combat boots off by the door and admired the cleanliness of the house. It sparkled to a perfection that Mac himself hadn’t put forth the effort into obtaining. The floor tiles glistened with a fresh coat of Pine-Sol and when Mac stepped into the kitchen, Dennis was there perched high atop a step stool.  


“Whatcha doing?” Mac looked around the kitchen, amazed that Dennis had seemingly transformed the place in a mere eight hours.  


Dennis snapped the cover of the smoke detector shut and smiled knowingly. “I have just solved all of our problems, that’s what. That chirping? No need for anything as grandiose as calling a repair man. Not that I wouldn’t have just looked it up on YouTube – look, it just needed a new battery.” Dennis held up the dead nine-volt and tossed it expertly into the trash can across the room. “No more annoying chirping. No more sleepless nights – well, due to this thing, anyway.”  


“Wow, Den, god – I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I just assumed the thing was hardwired!”  


“Well, yeah, it takes a little bit of common sense.”  


“What about the pool filter?”  


“Um, yeah, so I did have to call a repairman for that. But it’s done! It’s done, and so is everything else. Trash room and tacky air fresheners? Gone. Dog’s grave? Moved to the back. Wally? Avoided him all day. Dinner? It’s in the oven.”  


Mac glanced over and noticed a roast tied with butcher’s string and simmering in a sumptuous au jus in the bottom of the double wall oven. He took a deep breath and spotted Dennis climbing down from the step stool. “Wow, man. This doesn’t bother you?”  


“What, getting all of this done? Nahh, it…sometimes it’s just easier to let me do everything.”  


_“Oh.”_  


“Oh, what?”  


Mac’s face slipped into a knowing expression, jamming his tongue into the pocket of his cheek and willing himself to not choke up. “It’s nothing.” He turned away to head up to his bedroom and Dennis stopped him in the foyer, turning him around.  


“No, don’t do this to me, Mac. Say what you want to say, I’ve already told you this.”  


Mac swallowed and a sharp breath exited his nose. “Okay, I just feel kinda like you’re running the show again, in a certain way, with you staying home and doing everything.”  


Dennis rolled his eyes and exhaled, annoyed. “We’ve been over this already. Truthfully, yes, I run the show to a certain degree. But that’s because you – for whatever reason – aren’t behind me one hundred percent. You could have done all of the chores I did today. I did them in eight hours. You have had almost a month, and nothing got done.”  


“I was preoccupied…I was depressed, dude, my mind just wouldn’t quit,” Mac explained, toying with the phone in his pocket. “I felt good at work today, like I was doing something important…but I don’t know how to explain it. Like I never feel important enough to you. I feel guilty for not helping out…but at the same time, I can’t bring myself to really jump up and change my behavior.”  


Dennis looked at Mac pointedly in the face, clenching his jaw and willing himself to keep his composure. “Look, man. This isn’t about what you can or can’t do for me, or the house. You’ve got two options if you want to remedy this obsession with second-guessing yourself. You can either A – stop worrying about being in control…that’s what I’m here for, after all. You’re not useless, and it makes things easier on both of us when I steer the ship. Or B – you are welcome to do everything here at the homestead yourself. It makes you miserable, and I have no problem whatsoever heading up the actual house chores and shit, so my suggestion is to just deal with it. Resentment? Ha, sure, I have quite a bit after a decade of living together. But still, we have to be in this together. I don’t have a reason why – as fucking irritating as you are sometimes – I don’t have a clear reason as to why I can’t quit you. I don’t want to live with anyone else. I’ve given up the stupid dream of being married to some babe and populating the world with my superior progeny. I’m almost forty years old for Chrissakes and Mac – don’t you see? You’re the only constant I have known for years. You don’t change. Even when everything around us changes, even when I kick and scream because you’ve got me so annoyed I could just wrap my fingers around your neck and shake you—“ Dennis twisted his hands into a choking gesture, accentuating the truth in his words. “Even when you’ve got me to that point with your harping and whining…all the times you have been gone from me in the past, I wasn’t able to deal with it. I’ve lost so much sleep over you and I have to ask myself, why? _What am I afraid of?”_  


Mac furrowed his brow, struggling to follow Dennis’s rapid onslaught of emotion. Defeatedly, he closed his eyes to search for the words to say, when he felt a light kiss on his cheek, and he stepped back to find himself with Dennis’s angular face square with his. Dennis’s face softened and he began again. “I can’t do this without you, and I can’t lie to myself. It might seem like I’ve got everything in check, but believe me – you’re an astronomical factor as to why I do.”  


“Um,” Mac bit his lip, tense with the sensation of all systems firing through his nerves at once as Dennis stood there, crystalline blue eyes arresting him and daring him to make a move, cocking his head to one side and moving in closer still…  


“Aaaah, god damn it! I didn’t know it was that fucking loud!” Dennis was jolted out of the moment by the grating sound of the buzzer from the oven. He smiled at Mac and tipped his head toward the kitchen. “Dinner is served.”  


⁂

Mac sat at the dining table, bouncing his foot excitedly as he waited for Dennis to serve dinner. The thick smell of roast beef and rosemary graced the open kitchen. Dennis went so far as to stretch out a linen tablecloth and burn a candle between their two placesettings. The lights over the dining area had been dimmed, so when Dennis sat down with their plates, his face glowed a soft golden, a nice contrast against the enraged, weapon-slinging character of the night before. Mac didn't want to spoil their dinner with the complex inner workings of their relationship right now, though. He breathed in the delectable aroma of the gorgeous dish Dennis had sat in front of him.  


"Wow Den, this looks amazing -- what is it?" Mac was puzzled by the fresh green filling spiraled into the center of the roast.  


"Beef roulade with a walnut-pesto filling, rosemary potatoes and carrots, and...the _piece de resistance..."_ Dennis tilted a bottle of Moët and Chandon Rosé Impérial into his extended left hand and brandished a kitchen knife with his right, effortlessly sabering the top of the bottle off and pouring each of them a glass with a flourish.  


Mac sat wide-eyed at the performance, but loved the fact that Dennis always put maximum effort into anything he was proud of.  


"Dig in," Dennis allowed, and the two of them did - Dennis indulging in silent appreciation, Mac mmmmmm-ing liberally with each bite.  


"God damn, I'll tell you, I'm a hell of a cook," Dennis mused.  


"So I guess you have no need to throw the plate down the hallway?" Mac teased. Dennis only stared coldly at him, forkful of food paused midair.  


"Right, well, it's great, thank you so much for making this," Mac attempted a save, relieved when Dennis continued eating. "You're gonna have to show me how you did it."  


Dennis smiled and swallowed his bite. "Mac. The whole point of me staying home today was to lead by example. I did what you've got inside of you to do - I looked up a recipe and I made it. I don't see how feeding us something awesome wouldn't give you a sense of purpose, I just don't get it."  


"Well, you know...I'll try it, I promise. I can do it tomorrow, we can trade off days or something," Mac offered, desperate to get off the souring topic. "Besides, dude - why don't we just go to work together, like before? I don't see what's so bad about my music..."  


Dennis didn't want to rehash the same arguments from earlier. He'd had a productive day, and wanted nothing more than to unwind the rest of the night. He shifted underneath the table and cut Mac's blabbering short.  


"Dude, is that your foot?"  


"Maybe."  


Mac felt the same confusing tingling run down his spine that he felt when he stood nose to nose with his best friend earlier. Dennis's face glowed sinister under the candlelight, his smile cocked to one side.  


"Uh, what are you doing? Get your foot off my leg!"  


"No," Dennis made it a point to jam his socked toes into the fleshy part of Mac's calf, prompting Mac into a rare show of speechlessness, eyes widening with the slow drag of argyle against his stodgy cotton pants. Dennis's stare burned easily through Mac's face. It was going to be a long night.  


⁂

Though the appropriate repairs had been made to the dysfunctional gadgets around the house, Mac and Dennis found themselves unable to fall asleep yet again. For Mac, it was the unstoppable worry of the words Dennis had spat into his face earlier, and even though Mac felt guilt for his actions, time always proved that he failed to modify his behavior in any way. He sought to be absolved from responsibility for his actions through prayer and repentance, but this was a charade: a way to escape the punishment of the crushing condemnation of his conscience. Dennis, on the other hand, evaded sleep purposely: he was unbelievably aroused after he'd caught a glimpse of Mac changing into his pajamas because the man had stupidly failed to notice that his bedroom door didn't quite latch all the way, causing the door to slip open a few inches after the fact (not that Dennis's "home repairs" had anything to do with this malfunction.) Earlier, Dennis had crouched in a darkened corner of the upstairs hallway which gave him a perfect line of sight into Mac's bedroom, and lo and behold, there he was in all his glory after his shower, disrobed and taking his sweet time dressing for bed, stripping the fluffy white towel from his muscular body and standing proudly in front of the mirror, admiring himself. Dennis smirked and relished in the scheme he began to concoct in his mind: corner Mac into taking responsibility for once in his life and turn Dennis's body out.  


A few minutes after midnight, Dennis put his plan into action. They'd both been "sleeping" for about an hour now, and Dennis could hear Mac whispering his prayers through the thin wall that separated their bedrooms. _What an idiot,_ Dennis thought. _I can't believe he seriously thinks that shit works._  


Dennis moved stealthily from his bedroom into the hallway, tiptoeing for fear that Mac would catch on and do something stupid like attempt to fend off a burglar with his lame karate moves. Thankfully, Dennis moved quietly enough through the dim corridor that Mac was none the wiser, probably still repenting silently for whatever sins he felt like he had committed that day.  


With Mac's door cracked unbeknownst to him, Dennis furtively slid his fingers around the door and peeled it back ever so slightly, just enough for him to slip his lithe body through the opening. Mac's back was to him and he had fallen into a light snoring. Perfect. Dennis sized him up before making his move: moonlight spilling in through the uncovered window, fraying black Riot shirt fresh from the dryer, toweled hair untethered from its usual plasticky product. Sliding in quietly next to Mac’s unassuming body, Dennis sidled up against him as close as he could, nestling into the feathery pillow and whispering against Mac’s ear: “What’cha doing, baby boy?”  


Mac startled to life and flipped over to face his now-chuckling counterpart. This mirroring of their faces was becoming all too familiar. “Jesus, Den, what the hell are you doing in here!?”  


Dennis shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d come in here and see what you’re up to.”  


“Well, thanks a lot, man, I had actually gotten to sleep for once…what the fuck are you doing?” Mac gasped as Dennis threw his arm over his friend’s chest, the thin blue pajama bottoms doing next to nothing to mask his growing erection. Dennis squirmed against the plain white sheets and threw down the gauntlet: “Forget sleeping. I figured we could do something more…physical,” he led, sneering, eyes intense through the milky gray haze of the bedroom’s glow.  


“Physical like…?” Mac played dumb but he’d been no stranger to the signs Dennis had thrown out all day: after all, was it really a coincidence that Dennis just happened to press his crotch up against Mac’s ass not once, not twice, but three times while Mac washed the dishes after dinner, claiming that it was too tight a squeeze between the sink and the kitchen island? Mac’s mind raced with the unavoidable nagging of _sin, sin, sin…_ but he’d waited too long for this, and as long as it wasn’t himself initiating the first move, he could plausibly later claim ignorance as Eve did with her serpent…  


“Gee, I don’t know, Mac…what do you consider physical?” Dennis cocked his head and traced his fingers along Mac’s rough jawline, pausing at the corner of his waiting mouth. Mac's huge brown eyes blinked meekly into the reflection of his face in Dennis's own steely gaze. “Of or relating to the…body,” Dennis continued, clutching a fistful of Mac’s hair and drawing him into a ravenous kiss, lips hungry for the reckoning of years of sexual frustration for this one body in particular. Dennis noticed that Mac kissed back shyly and carefully; Dennis knew that Mac felt that his guilt would expand with the more effort he put into the acts.  


_Nope, you’re going to Hell for this,_ Dennis thought, _I’m not letting you escape it._ Dennis tightened his grip on the back of Mac’s neck and pushed his friend into him as hard as he could, forcing Mac to swallow down the tongue imploring the recesses of his mouth, gagging him with the force, compelling Mac to put his one hundred percent into this. Dennis slid his body over Mac and straddled him, pinning him down into the mattress with one hand and playing with his dark hair with the other, smiling wickedly with delight when he felt Mac begin to bend to his will, becoming more fluid and assertive with Dennis, allowing his hands to roam down Dennis’s shirtless back and stopping short of his pajama-clad ass.  


“There you go,” Dennis coaxed as he allowed Mac to take a breather from the intense kissing, delighting in the semi-penitent stare Mac afforded him. Dennis ruffled Mac's hair with one hand and braced himself against his ribcage with the other. “That’s what I want. Mac, do you love me?”  


Mac blinked his eyes hard, befuddled by the uncontrollable sexual urges he’d found the power to bring into fruition. “Why do you ask?”  


“Don’t play coy with me, boy, just answer the question,” Dennis hissed.  


“Well, yeah, I do, it’s…”  


“Then I’m going to make you show me,” Dennis commanded, dismounting from his friend, slipping out of his flimsy pajama bottoms and standing tall beside the bed, nearly colorless skin seeming more of an specter than a person. “In keeping concurrent with our discussion earlier, if you love something then you need to show how much you love it and desire to take care of it,” Dennis went on, rustling through Mac’s nightstand for the supplies he’d planted there. “You can’t just tell me…you have to make me understand your angle.”  


Mac brought his hands up to his face and sighed deeply into them; he somehow always knew that his first brazenly sexual encounter with Dennis would be rife with agenda. Still, that didn’t stop him from flippantly replying “Okay,” and unleashing the billowing supply of sexual tension he’d felt welling up inside him this entire time. He sat up quickly in bed and yanked off his underwear, Dennis diving on top of him again and peeling the worn t-shirt from his back, and suddenly they were a mess of limbs and sweat and biting, Mac sinking his teeth into all of the fleshy parts he’d fantasized about sucking on before, pummeling Dennis with a barrage of hickeys to alter the landscape of his otherwise unblemished pale skin. Hours seemed to pass in the space of mere minutes, Dennis allowing himself to become putty in Mac’s hands, relishing in the slightly uncoordinated pleasure bestowed upon him by his best friend. Mac gained more confidence in his moves as he pushed the unbecoming thought of religious warfare out of his brain and fixated on the task Dennis had given to him. _Show me_ echoed through his mind as he concentrated hard on every touch of his fingers against Dennis’s smooth skin, delicate traces down his arms and nearly painful squeezes into the thick muscles of his thighs. Mac performed with the gusto of a sex-starved maniac, swallowing Dennis’s cock whole and ignoring his sensitive gag reflex, clearly he was unprepared for this but he wasn’t about to give up. Splicing passion with the ambition to please Dennis, Mac knelt on the bed and slid his hands underneath Dennis’s fleshy ass, sucking his cock as deep as he could without suffocating, Dennis moaning incoherently somewhere in the distance of Mac’s mind. Staying focused on lavishing his friend with pleasure and keeping his religious reservations at bay, Mac quickly decided that only one virtue could win, and with a deep breath, he banished all thoughts of sin away as he switched gears.  


“Get up,” Mac ordered, and Dennis obliged, taking his place standing next to the length of the plushy mattress. Mac slicked his nearly-painfully hard cock up with flavored lube and recoiled at the sensitivity of his own touch. Dennis began to kneel to devour Mac whole, but Mac had a better idea. “No, dude, stand up and grab your ankles.”  


Dennis raised his eyebrows and scoffed, but Mac was quicker. He pushed Dennis over the side of the bed and grabbed his shoulder with one arm, sliding his rock-hard cock slowly and painfully into Dennis, failing to stop even when he heard his friend choke up with uneasiness. “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt,” Mac promised, allowing himself to pause once he was inside at full hilt, reeling with the pleasure from the spasmodic contractions force-dilating around him. Dennis shuddered and brought himself into focusing on the pleasure as Mac began slow and steady, fingers curling around Dennis’s shoulders, fingernails sinking into the hollows of his collarbones. Dennis moaned louder this time, unable to believe that someone he’d perceived as probably needing to be taught how to fuck was actually fucking him with the finesse of an expert – Mac had clearly practiced this phase of sex before.  


“God damn you’re so fucking tight,” Mac whined as he sunk his entire length in over and over, doubling himself over Dennis’s back and reaching around to caress his friend’s dripping cock, accentuating every stroke with a throaty sigh.  


“And you…have never done this before?” Dennis gasped in disbelief against the pillow jammed against his face.  


“Nope,” Mac spat the word out with a pop, legs shaking, slamming Dennis’s face down into the pillow with his free hand, running it back up toward his friend’s hips and yanking them closer, burying his cock deep inside and grinding the head against the sizable prostate he felt in there.  


Dennis murmured unintelligibly into the pillow and his mind clouded with a kaleidoscope of smeared colors, like oil gathered in a mud puddle. The pounding he was receiving from Mac more than satisfied his annoyance with Mac’s inability to show instead of tell, and while he was sure this sex was just as much for Mac’s gain as it was for his own, Dennis pushed the analytics out of his mind to concentrate on the near-paralyzing waves of heaven he was experiencing at the hands of his best friend – literally. Mac stroked Dennis harder and more acutely now, circling his thumb persistently over and over the head of his friend’s cock, the tightening in his abdomen impending; disappearing into the sensation, Dennis came hard and messily into Mac’s reddened hand, pulse after pulse of orgasmic gratification sinking him like ship. 

The graphic display of Dennis’s body clenching up and spilling cum sleek and sticky all over Mac’s hand triggered his own orgasm, and he plunged two fingers into his mouth to find Dennis’s taste salty but clean, sucking the delicacy from his long fingers as he blew his own load into his best friend, doubling over even harder to milk out every last sinuous drop. Mac’s eyes widened as he couldn’t believe what had just transpired, fingers still sunk deep against the back of his tongue lingering with Dennis’s alkaline taste, his equivalent sweating profusely and flushed against the pillow below.  


Mac slipped unobtrusively out of Dennis and crawled into his bed, spent and aching with the uncertainty that follows such an act. Dennis pushed a terrycloth hand towel from the nightstand toward Mac and they wiped up the remnants of any body fluids before they huddled together breathlessly, face to face again, Dennis sated with satisfaction, Mac’s pupils blown with a mixture of comfort and a tinge of transgression.  


Dennis started up again after several minutes. “See? That’s all I wanted from you. I wanted you to show me what you’re capable of, stop holding it back, stop worrying that your little world is going to fall apart if you act on unfamiliarity.”  


Mac concentrated on catching his breath, covering himself timidly with the blanket, nodding into Dennis’s words thoughtfully. “Okay, I’ll try,” he panted.  


Dennis closed his eyes for several seconds, masking the annoyance he felt at the word _try,_ but let this one slide, given the circumstances – and securing the notion that the two of them would be consummating their long-suffering sexual frustrations on a regular basis going forward.  


“Let’s go to sleep,” Dennis offered, sliding his fingers between the spaces of Mac’s own clean hand. Mac sighed sleepily, then remembered what he had to ask.  


“Wait, Dennis? You asked if I loved you. Don’t you love me too?”  


Dennis bowed his head toward Mac and planted a final warm kiss on his lips for the night. “Of course I do, can’t you see it?” His question warranted no reply, and the two easily dissolved into a deep sleep that had eluded them for an entire thirty days prior.


End file.
